


scorn on his shoulders

by AllOfThisMatter



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Discrimination, F/M, Racism, Social Justice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 09:02:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3482351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllOfThisMatter/pseuds/AllOfThisMatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The universe is not quite as accepting as Jupiter had hoped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	scorn on his shoulders

60 years was certainly enough time to effect legal change, but not societal change, Jupiter came to discover. Her influence was more than enough to drive the splice rights movement, on planets from one end of the ‘verse to the other. Things went more smoothly, more easily on planets that she possessed, but not too much more difficult on ones she didn’t. Really, it wasn’t the law. It was the people. Unlearning hate was not something that came very easily to the human race. Nor, she had found bitterly, did it come very easily to many other races in the verse.

She was truly proud of the people that had helped her make this change. They were good people, all of them. Because of their efforts, splices now legally owned themselves. They could marry anyone they chose, reproduce without any restrictions, and vote in whatever governments they were citizens of. If you chose to be a retro-fit splice later on in your life, you could pay to have the modifications done, or you could have them done for free as long as you agreed to work for an entity of your choice for a paid term of 3 years at minimum, during which time you were free to switch employers, gain promotions, or levy complaints with splice unions. Those that were born spliced were allowed to take aptitude tests and choose their profession, under the same minimum rules that applied to retro-fits, excepting that their terms of service were 5 years usually. All splices, regardless of their circumstance, were now totally free of the branding process and could not be bought and sold.

Jupiter had grown up facing such judgment and discrimination, being a Russian illegal and a female, and all her life, even in her worst moments, she hated that people hated other people for things as simple as the color of their skin, the arrangement of their chromosomes, the people they loved. It sickened her. So when she entered this vast, supposedly advanced human society and found that people were discriminated against on an entirely new, horrendous level, she was utterly determined to use her power for positive change. All of these emotions were also intensified, compounded by her desperate desire to protect three specific splices. She wanted Stinger to be allowed to retire when he wanted, to tend his bees in peace. She wanted Kiza to get to be whatever she found that she loved, to get to go to school as long as she wanted. She wanted Caine to know he always had the choice to stay with her or leave, as unbearable as that thought was. She wanted all splices to be allowed to do whatever they wanted. To love themselves, all their unique traits and cultures.

In places where Jupiter was a queen and Caine was the head of her guard, a decorated Skyjacker, people were much more respectful and accepting of their relationship. It was always the worst when they were just out walking somewhere, alone together where no one knew she was an Entitled. Upturned noses, condescending sneers, muttered comments. Jupiter always instinctively clung tighter to his hand or wrapped an arm around his waist, her face in a defensive posture, but when people verged on physical violence he put a safe distance between them and turned into that detached royal guard persona. Then suddenly, no one noticed or cared.

It made her skin crawl, made her seethe with anger. How could a society so beyond all levels of Earthling comprehension be so base, so ignorant? How could anyone look at a person and say they didn’t matter, just because a small part of their genes was of a different species? Then she always swallowed her anger with a bitter pill. She knew how. They did it the same way people on Earth had beaten homosexual people, had murdered black men, had incarcerated the mentally variegated. Had abused, enslaved, obliterated entire cultures. Because difference is danger. Because there’s always a group that benefits from the oppression of another. Because people are afraid of what they don’t understand, what they can’t control. And they never scarcely bother to learn, to change.

Right now, it was late, and Jupiter was trying to read a book while Caine dozed beside her. She couldn’t focus on it any more, and set the volume aside. Tears were digging their ragged nails into the back of her throat as she looked at him. He seldom looked relaxed, but asleep, he always looked utterly at peace. He could have even been described as vulnerable. In all their years together, she hadn’t tired of the sound of his sleeping breath, the fluttering of his eyes beneath his lids and lashes as he dreamed. He was beautiful. He loved her. And oh, how she loved him.

She bit her lip to fight back a sob and desperately blinked back the tears, careful not to wake him. Even asleep, the smallest sound of her distress, the faintest scent of a single saline drop would have him roaring awake to fix it, whether that meant holding her and drying her tears or beating the hell out of somebody. And she just wanted to watch him sleep right now. To know that he was alright, that he was rested.

Jupiter Jones had met a vast number of people in her years thus far. None of them had ever been as sweet, as considerate, as dedicated to her as Caine Wise. Life had not treated him well for a long, long time. But somehow there was a light in him, that hadn’t gone out, hadn’t diminished. There was a simple goodness to him, and Jupiter loved that about him. She shuddered with the memory of his accounts of his life before her. Of the abuse, the court-martial. Of the loss of his only friends. She ached with the burden of this knowledge, but she also knew how content he was now, with her, with their life together. It made her absolutely enraged to know that people looked at this man as just a beast, a tool for a set number of purposes.

At that moment, she made him a promise. On her own life she swore, that even if it took millennia, she would reorder the entire universe for him. Stinger and Kiza deserved better. He deserved better. And she would make it for them, no matter what.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Jupiter Ascending or any of its characters.


End file.
